RIPPA II! Young Pilgrim

Joey Rippa is one of the most naturally gifted footballers England's Second Division has ever seen. He's also one of the least interested in that fact. When Plymouth Argyle's pre-season tour brings him back to Australia, Rippa arrives late, sunburnt, and carrying an impressive holiday paunch. His long-suffering manager Bobby Noll - the man who discovered him surfing a wave in Western Australia and somehow turned him into Plymouth's Player of the Year - is not impressed. Back in England, Rippa is juggling the demands of a new season, an unexpected international call-up, a backpackers hostel full of 52 nationalities, an underground lawn bowls operation of questionable legality, and the arrival of Ned Buckley, a younger, fitter, more dedicated Australian who threatens to take everything Rippa has worked so hard to almost care about. Young Pilgrim is the second book in P.J. Laverty's RIPPA! series; a comedy about football, freedom, and a young man who would rather be anywhere else, doing almost anything else, and is somehow brilliant at the one thing he can't escape. If you haven't met Joey Rippa yet, start with RIPPA! - the book that started it all.